WEBVTT 00:03.253 --> 00:08.615 [SPEAKER_02]: If you want to grow the reach, revenue, and impact of your learning business, you're in the right place. 00:09.156 --> 00:10.176 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Celisa Steele. 00:10.196 --> 00:14.318 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jeff Cobb, and this is the leading learning podcast. 00:17.500 --> 00:22.407 [SPEAKER_00]: Technology is always reshaping the world, and therefore, how learning businesses operate. 00:22.788 --> 00:28.175 [SPEAKER_00]: From the early days of the web, through mobile and social, and now with the rise of artificial intelligence. 00:28.756 --> 00:32.862 [SPEAKER_00]: These shifts create both opportunities and challenges for learning providers. 00:33.583 --> 00:38.084 [SPEAKER_02]: Our guest in this episode, number 461, is a myth, Nagarajan. 00:38.464 --> 00:46.187 [SPEAKER_02]: A myth is the chairman of Blue Cyprus, a family of companies that help associations embrace AI and transform how they deliver value. 00:46.707 --> 00:53.549 [SPEAKER_02]: He's also behind sidecar, which aims to educate a million association professionals in AI by the end of the decade. 00:54.309 --> 01:06.113 [SPEAKER_00]: Amethan, I talk about patterns he's seen across multiple waves of technological disruption, where associations stand today with AI adoption, and what leaders need to do to be prepared for the future. 01:06.807 --> 01:17.690 [SPEAKER_02]: UNIMEEZE also get into some of the applications, his companies are building, and what those tools reveal about how associations can use AI for knowledge, insight, and personalization. 01:18.210 --> 01:21.511 [SPEAKER_00]: And we close with a focus on the human side of all this. 01:21.811 --> 01:27.733 [SPEAKER_00]: How learning businesses can lean into the distinctly human opportunities that AI won't replace. 01:28.393 --> 01:34.199 [SPEAKER_02]: If you want to better understand the implications of AI for your learning business, then this episode is for you. 01:34.819 --> 01:39.504 [SPEAKER_02]: The conversation kicks off with a myth talking about what he's done and is now doing with his companies. 01:45.391 --> 01:54.521 [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm probably known originally or perhaps best known for having started an AMS company in this space back in the 90s, a company called Aptify, which I sold about 10 years ago. 01:55.101 --> 02:02.609 [SPEAKER_01]: Since then, I've been focused on a family of companies called Blue Cyprus, and Blue Cyprus is an AI-oriented shop. 02:02.689 --> 02:06.614 [SPEAKER_01]: So essentially, we have a number of different brands within our family. 02:07.154 --> 02:15.479 [SPEAKER_01]: that provide a combination of AI learning, AI services, and also AI software to the association sector very, very specifically. 02:16.059 --> 02:17.520 [SPEAKER_01]: And we've been doing that for about 10 years. 02:17.720 --> 02:23.103 [SPEAKER_01]: So we've been in AI for a long, long time, and AI speak, and are very deep in it. 02:23.223 --> 02:36.371 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the focus for me is how do we take AI and help associations radically transform, not just incrementally improved, but radically transform their business models, their value delivery, and how they operate internally as well. 02:36.952 --> 02:39.455 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I know we're going to talk about AI more here. 02:39.475 --> 02:42.479 [SPEAKER_00]: You're definitely somebody to be talking to about AI. 02:42.519 --> 02:52.211 [SPEAKER_00]: But I was struck as you were talking to, and it's already been a decade since you sold aptify, and I know you were in the association world for years before that. 02:52.251 --> 02:54.975 [SPEAKER_00]: I believe aptify was your first company if I'm correct. 02:55.155 --> 03:05.501 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I started off in some from California grew up in Silicon Valley, and programming computers since I was in single digit years, and started my first company at the age of 17, which was to justify it. 03:05.941 --> 03:07.982 [SPEAKER_01]: Did not start out in the association market. 03:08.002 --> 03:11.484 [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know what an association was back in 93 when I started it. 03:12.005 --> 03:19.649 [SPEAKER_01]: But back in those days, I had a knack for software development, and I decided to build a tool set that would help people build database apps. 03:20.309 --> 03:24.092 [SPEAKER_01]: and that turned into a really robust platform in the early and bid 90s. 03:24.313 --> 03:32.179 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I happened upon the association market in the mid 90s and then just kind of fell in love with it over time and focused exclusively on it for quite a while. 03:32.399 --> 03:46.031 [SPEAKER_00]: So, so you have been doing it for quite a while, as you said, you know, you're original intent, but aptified took you there and, you know, you've been there all the way through Blue Cyprus, which I know has that, you know, portfolio of companies that serve associations, 03:46.591 --> 03:51.433 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what's kept you engaged with the sector over that period of time? 03:52.353 --> 03:56.874 [SPEAKER_01]: The purpose of the nature of the people, I think the community is fantastic. 03:56.914 --> 04:01.836 [SPEAKER_01]: The people in this market are focused on trying to have an impact in the world. 04:01.916 --> 04:07.178 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, by helping associations do what they do better, we feel like we're making an impact. 04:07.338 --> 04:08.898 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I'm having an impact. 04:09.358 --> 04:13.700 [SPEAKER_01]: There's lots of different sectors, lots of different niche markets that you can focus on as an entrepreneur. 04:14.400 --> 04:36.994 [SPEAKER_01]: I happen to find this one really by accident, it wasn't an intention, it just happened upon an association once upon a time back in the 90s and found another one and then found another one and I said, oh, this is actually like a whole market and I stayed because of course it's a great business opportunity, it's a really robust marketplace, once you get to know the market, you realize it's quite substantial, especially when you look at it globally. 04:37.614 --> 04:54.143 [SPEAKER_01]: But I stayed, and I came back to it after selling aptify because I felt a really deep connection with the space and wanting to help people in this space, not just survive or stay relevant, but rather thrive, drive aggressive transformative change. 04:54.183 --> 04:55.163 [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I've always been about. 04:55.203 --> 04:56.524 [SPEAKER_01]: It's always been exciting to me to, 04:57.024 --> 05:00.445 [SPEAKER_01]: help people really do big things and that's what we're trying to do at Blue Cyprus. 05:00.505 --> 05:17.792 [SPEAKER_01]: So I've been doing AI stuff actually since the early 2010s we started getting into AI at Aptify in the years preceding the sale of it, we started getting pretty heavily into AI and then ended up spinning out those technologies into what became Rossa.io which was our first AI software company way back in the day. 05:17.872 --> 05:20.373 [SPEAKER_01]: So we still own that company and are growing it and it's doing well. 05:21.353 --> 05:27.116 [SPEAKER_01]: it's been a while, but we've seen AI from lots of different stages of development and the applicability to the market. 05:27.536 --> 05:29.617 [SPEAKER_00]: Right, yet forgotten you had gotten into it that early. 05:29.757 --> 05:42.223 [SPEAKER_00]: It's funny in some ways our stories are similar because I too was building a piece of software that was not intended for the Association World and found myself in the Association World and have been there ever since, but you were there a little earlier than 05:42.683 --> 05:46.805 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you've seen some pretty big shifts from the rise of the web. 05:46.845 --> 05:48.226 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you started out in the early 90s. 05:48.246 --> 05:57.871 [SPEAKER_00]: The web was still in its infancy, then into the social media craze, which I remember that hitting associations and everybody thought was going to put associations out of business and now AI. 05:57.971 --> 06:08.316 [SPEAKER_00]: So as somebody who's observed all of that, are their patterns, you see repeating or to lessons that you think leaders should draw, particularly right now if they're thinking about, 06:11.233 --> 06:12.394 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they're definitely patterns. 06:12.694 --> 06:33.763 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that going through those major transitions, the obviously the internet and the web, and then e-commerce, mobile, social, all these big shifts, and obviously now AI, as you mentioned, common patterns are, first of all, that people tend to overestimate the near-term impact, but radically underestimate the long-term impact of 06:34.463 --> 06:38.406 [SPEAKER_01]: technologies that are really representative of phase changes, right? 06:38.446 --> 06:52.295 [SPEAKER_01]: So they're not just an incremental innovation where you went from the iPhone 15 to the iPhone 16 and you got some new widgets on your screen, but rather something that can fundamentally transform the economic relationship between buyers and sellers. 06:52.435 --> 06:54.236 [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean that in the broadest possible sense. 06:54.677 --> 06:58.519 [SPEAKER_01]: And so if you think about what happened in each of those transitions over the last 30 07:02.802 --> 07:06.763 [SPEAKER_01]: information advantage or disadvantage on the demand side or the supply side of the curve. 07:07.123 --> 07:08.564 [SPEAKER_01]: You look at distribution. 07:08.884 --> 07:15.286 [SPEAKER_01]: I talk a lot about AI as being the third exponential curve after following two others. 07:15.466 --> 07:22.288 [SPEAKER_01]: One is the compute curve which everyone talks about often known as Moore's Law, the exponential rise in compute power relative to cost. 07:22.848 --> 07:26.089 [SPEAKER_01]: And then also what ended up happening with the internet was the distribution curve. 07:26.549 --> 07:32.210 [SPEAKER_01]: We essentially flattened out the cost of distributing nearly anything that can be digitized down to essentially zero. 07:32.810 --> 07:38.912 [SPEAKER_01]: But now it's happening with AI as the cost of reasoning, the core component of what we consider intelligence is going to zero. 07:39.352 --> 07:40.292 [SPEAKER_01]: And we don't know what to do with that. 07:40.592 --> 07:47.554 [SPEAKER_01]: The cardback's the question of pattern recognition as costs approach zero for something that was once scarce and is now becoming abundant, 07:48.334 --> 07:55.678 [SPEAKER_01]: It re-frames the relationship between consumers of value and producers of value or buyers and sellers to put it another way. 07:56.139 --> 08:07.145 [SPEAKER_01]: And so people often don't anticipate the magnitude of the impact long term, but they kind of think about the hype cycle and they're like, Oh my god, this is going to change everything and then they wake up a year later like, well, actually, I think it's having changed that much. 08:07.625 --> 08:14.350 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a false sense of safety in the status quo that it gives people, and I'll come back to my thoughts on AI on that. 08:14.370 --> 08:19.433 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure at some point in this discussion specifically, but because it is moving faster than these other curves. 08:19.493 --> 08:23.917 [SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy as the internet and mobile and all that was, it's nothing compared to AI in terms of speed. 08:23.997 --> 08:24.137 [SPEAKER_01]: But 08:24.737 --> 08:36.120 [SPEAKER_01]: I guess my main point that I'm trying to underscore in terms of the trend line across these various changes over time is that when people get this sense of security, that, that didn't really change that much. 08:36.760 --> 08:41.561 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the bigger tail on the change, the transformative impact comes along. 08:42.101 --> 08:43.221 [SPEAKER_01]: That's when they get caught off guard. 08:43.541 --> 08:46.542 [SPEAKER_01]: So, think about like back in the 90s, people were saying, oh, 08:46.582 --> 08:49.283 [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, associations are going to be out of business pretty soon. 08:49.323 --> 08:57.946 [SPEAKER_01]: There's always companies that are going to be coming out with verticalized websites that are going to take over associations and associations were still there in the early 2000s. 08:58.287 --> 08:59.847 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, well, that didn't happen. 09:00.387 --> 09:08.271 [SPEAKER_01]: But sure, actually, the internet has displaced the activities that associations have historically done in many ways, and AI will do that as well. 09:08.871 --> 09:13.813 [SPEAKER_01]: So, I guess that's my general observation is that people tend to not move quickly enough because they get 09:14.633 --> 09:21.159 [SPEAKER_01]: associations are generally not the first adopters, right, like we've talked about that before in our conversations before this pod. 09:21.199 --> 09:32.569 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a frustration to technologists and people who are trying to push the boundaries of what's possible, but there's some associations move a little bit faster than others, but generally they're kind of slow movers for the most part. 09:33.149 --> 09:41.073 [SPEAKER_01]: But slow movers tend to have their perspectives reinforced by the initial hype cycle being greater than the initial return. 09:41.513 --> 09:49.657 [SPEAKER_01]: And then they get totally caught off guard because the bigger wave is coming back on the back end of it that underestimation of the long term impact that I'm referring to. 09:50.137 --> 09:52.458 [SPEAKER_01]: So we can't afford to do that with AI is the bottom line. 09:53.105 --> 10:03.036 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you think of and if you can't it's fine, but I'm thinking what are examples of organizations in those sort of earlier waves that either really got it right they timed it correctly. 10:03.076 --> 10:12.927 [SPEAKER_00]: They saw what was going on and reaped huge benefits by you know what was happening with the web or social or whatever or conversely maybe one or two that didn't and kind of got clobbered by it. 10:14.028 --> 10:29.507 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think there was a pretty big shift to the world of education delivery online back in the whole phase of internet and mobile and, you know, that world, far better than I do, Jeff, but, you know, the concept of people delivering traditional classroom-based synchronous training when asynchronous was getting better and better and better. 10:30.047 --> 10:43.034 [SPEAKER_01]: more dynamic, more capable, the learning outcomes were increasingly achieving the goal of the student, and so a lot of associations back in the 90s were like, no, distance learning, remote learning, as we used to call it back then, just not as effective. 10:43.174 --> 10:48.817 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, there are definitely still to this day, tremendous advantages of synchronous and classroom face-to-face learning. 10:49.357 --> 10:58.304 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think the modalities have improved so much that many of the people who were thinking really the old way, that they weren't even willing to dabble in online asynchronous learning, got crushed. 10:58.684 --> 11:03.447 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you see associations where they had significant revenue declines, where they weren't focused on that yet. 11:03.948 --> 11:09.712 [SPEAKER_01]: You see, for example, medical specialty societies, there's a number of them that I'm quite familiar with that have thrived. 11:10.292 --> 11:17.175 [SPEAKER_01]: in this era because they've really invested in making it possible to do distributed learning really well through the Internet, of course, through mobile. 11:17.815 --> 11:20.476 [SPEAKER_01]: But embracing the modality for what it is, right? 11:20.496 --> 11:29.580 [SPEAKER_01]: So like, you can say to me, oh, well, AI will never replace humans for X. Just like, the Internet will never replace space to face for X. 11:30.380 --> 11:32.981 [SPEAKER_01]: That's true to some extent, and maybe eventually it's not. 11:33.041 --> 11:35.321 [SPEAKER_01]: People might say, oh, you know, they're streamed video in the internet. 11:35.381 --> 11:36.522 [SPEAKER_01]: It's far too slow, right? 11:37.102 --> 11:38.062 [SPEAKER_01]: That's just a matter of time. 11:38.162 --> 11:39.422 [SPEAKER_01]: But that's just an example. 11:39.823 --> 11:49.185 [SPEAKER_01]: But there's certain things I think that are fair to say, like our biology mandates that we have connection, that we are in close proximity with others in our species, right? 11:49.325 --> 11:52.146 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not psychology, it's biology that dictates that. 11:52.686 --> 11:56.987 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we're always going to crave elements that technology doesn't displace. 11:57.307 --> 11:59.168 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's good, I think, that's really, really good. 11:59.948 --> 12:05.572 [SPEAKER_01]: But I guess the point would be that people forget about the new, right? 12:05.592 --> 12:08.174 [SPEAKER_01]: They're saying it won't displace the old, okay? 12:08.254 --> 12:09.775 [SPEAKER_01]: But what is it going to do that's different? 12:09.975 --> 12:15.999 [SPEAKER_01]: That's either complimentary or in some cases crowds out the need for the old, even if it's not exactly the same. 12:16.139 --> 12:25.065 [SPEAKER_01]: It's still a substitute good if people buy X instead of Y, even if X is not an exact substitute in terms of its functionality, if people stop buying the other product. 12:27.802 --> 12:34.212 [SPEAKER_00]: We're doing associations actually stand right now with AI adoption and where do you think they actually should be? 12:35.281 --> 12:42.864 [SPEAKER_01]: So if I were to use a report card, type of metaphor, I'd say it's not looking so great today, but I'm optimistic about the future. 12:43.444 --> 12:52.028 [SPEAKER_01]: So the way I would look at the current state of affairs is that I think about education as the leading indicator for associations, ability to adopt AI. 12:52.128 --> 12:58.530 [SPEAKER_01]: So you can go to vendors like ourselves, or any other company, and buy software, get help with services, et cetera. 12:58.890 --> 13:02.412 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's, there are lots of great things you can do that way, but that doesn't improve you. 13:03.272 --> 13:23.461 [SPEAKER_01]: And so what we are always focused on and we do some surveys around this is how much education are people taking in, whether they're the CEO or a first-year grad coming into the workforce, what level of investment in terms of time and dollars are people putting into learning and it's very minimal right now, it's very, very minimal people are doing almost nothing on average. 13:23.781 --> 13:27.643 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, of course, there are some associations that are putting some effort into this and that's fantastic. 13:27.963 --> 13:29.804 [SPEAKER_01]: They're going to see tons of dividends from that. 13:32.905 --> 13:35.347 [SPEAKER_01]: No matter at all, can solve your problem for you. 13:35.727 --> 13:37.589 [SPEAKER_01]: You have to be knowledgeable about this stuff. 13:37.969 --> 13:46.916 [SPEAKER_01]: The way I describe it is, let's just say we're off to a board retreat, you and I, along with our board, and we're association execs you the CO on the CO or some association. 13:46.936 --> 13:52.320 [SPEAKER_01]: And we've got 10, 20, maybe 50 board people members coming depending on the size of the association's group. 13:52.760 --> 13:56.103 [SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to figure out what the next year or two, three years look like. 13:56.743 --> 13:58.324 [SPEAKER_01]: How in the world, 13:59.065 --> 14:07.874 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you and I possibly stand a chance at doing a good job in building a strategic plan if we don't understand AI? 14:08.274 --> 14:08.915 [SPEAKER_01]: Quite deeply. 14:09.615 --> 14:13.139 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe not down to the bits and bytes, but we need to understand its capabilities. 14:13.539 --> 14:19.084 [SPEAKER_01]: And the way you understand its capabilities is by unpacking it, working with it, learning it, and you can't delegate that. 14:19.265 --> 14:21.086 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't delegate that to a technologist. 14:21.887 --> 14:23.508 [SPEAKER_01]: He can't delegate that to an outside vendor. 14:23.588 --> 14:25.270 [SPEAKER_01]: You have to make the investment in time. 14:25.850 --> 14:27.892 [SPEAKER_01]: The good news is it's not a PhD. 14:28.472 --> 14:30.114 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to go out of school formally. 14:30.154 --> 14:33.897 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to spend months or years doing nothing but AI learning. 14:33.917 --> 14:34.717 [SPEAKER_01]: That's impractical. 14:35.078 --> 14:39.941 [SPEAKER_01]: When I speak on the subject, Jeff, I always tell people, block off 15 minutes a day every day. 14:40.682 --> 14:46.744 [SPEAKER_01]: Listen to a podcast, watch a video, play with a particular tool, read a book, whatever makes sense. 14:46.964 --> 14:48.164 [SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, a mix of those things. 14:48.204 --> 14:52.926 [SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing quite like hands-on, use the mix of learning resources, but do it every day. 14:53.406 --> 14:57.747 [SPEAKER_01]: Just like working out, just like anything else you practice, you get better and better. 14:57.827 --> 15:02.589 [SPEAKER_01]: If you practice with AI, at least 15 minutes today, every single day for the rest of this year, 15:03.109 --> 15:08.952 [SPEAKER_01]: By then of the year, I would, I would be one to bet you'd be amongst the top 10% of the knowledgeable people in AI. 15:08.992 --> 15:11.894 [SPEAKER_01]: And we're recording this and kind of midlates summer time frame, right? 15:11.994 --> 15:17.477 [SPEAKER_01]: So you don't have a ton of time, but if you get started now and spend 15 minutes today, you'll be further along. 15:17.517 --> 15:18.838 [SPEAKER_01]: And there's lots of free resources. 15:18.878 --> 15:23.481 [SPEAKER_01]: There's obviously resources like side cars, which is my main focus these days is try to help associations. 15:23.961 --> 15:27.003 [SPEAKER_01]: Learn AI scale, in fact, our mission for the next. 15:27.523 --> 15:44.229 [SPEAKER_01]: four and a half years by the end of the decade is to educate a million association professionals in AI, whether it's at the top tier of our AI piece certification, or if it's just attending a free webinar, downloading a free book, I'm going to really care, our goal is to touch a million plus association folks in that time. 15:44.569 --> 15:49.991 [SPEAKER_01]: But that's still a drop in the bucket compared to the number of people that work in a space, both as paid staff and volunteers. 15:50.071 --> 15:56.274 [SPEAKER_01]: So, to me, the report card going back to that is not great today, but the good news is we can change it quite easily. 15:57.074 --> 16:06.619 [SPEAKER_01]: My bottom line for the prognosis for the future is if associations make that investment in education and they kind of put on their creative thinking hats, they have all the opportunity in the world. 16:07.160 --> 16:13.283 [SPEAKER_01]: AI is lowered the cost of everything, it's lowered the cost of software development of writing, of building anything from scratch. 16:13.703 --> 16:21.108 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the barriers to entry for associations to get into completely new lines of business with completely different ways of thinking in order to solve 16:21.848 --> 16:26.494 [SPEAKER_01]: the problems that their members will have in one two or three years is better than ever. 16:26.914 --> 16:33.202 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're willing to think creatively, take a little bit of risk, do some experiments to most importantly invest some time. 16:33.802 --> 16:37.186 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the future is extremely bright for any association that wants to play in the game. 16:37.647 --> 16:39.509 [SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of people aren't playing in the game at all. 16:39.709 --> 16:41.572 [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of them are just kind of sitting on the sidelines. 16:42.043 --> 16:43.264 [SPEAKER_00]: what do you see as the cost? 16:43.324 --> 16:49.887 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean I'm looking at it obviously from the standpoint of the learning business and you know organizations provide educational learning. 16:50.307 --> 16:55.109 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously what AI is doing there in terms of providing you know adaptive learning experiences personalization. 16:55.149 --> 16:59.291 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're not getting on board with that, somebody's going to outpace you in your market. 17:00.312 --> 17:01.912 [SPEAKER_00]: What about more generally for association? 17:01.932 --> 17:05.134 [SPEAKER_00]: What's the opportunity cost that they don't do what you're talking about? 17:06.105 --> 17:07.566 [SPEAKER_01]: You become obsolete pretty quickly. 17:07.626 --> 17:15.171 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, many associations have the most reputable brand and the best content and the strongest community in their verticals. 17:15.291 --> 17:29.240 [SPEAKER_01]: So let's say your vertical is a particular profession maybe bounded by a particular geography, where you are still the number one game in town for, let's say, a given state and a given field, or maybe nationally, maybe internationally. 17:29.900 --> 17:31.822 [SPEAKER_01]: And so in your niche, whatever that is, 17:35.584 --> 17:56.556 [SPEAKER_01]: Yet, you decide intentionally, even though it may not be because of any malicious intent, but it is intentional that you're going to make it really hard for people to get your content, to find what they need, to gain actual value from your organization is going to be tough, because you're going to make your website kind of a Byzantine structure. 17:56.996 --> 17:59.538 [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to make it so that your web content, 18:00.178 --> 18:02.539 [SPEAKER_01]: for learning isn't particularly up-to-date. 18:02.919 --> 18:10.201 [SPEAKER_01]: And I say it in this very directed manner that it's a choice because all things in life for a choice in terms of where you invest your energy and your dollars. 18:10.801 --> 18:13.402 [SPEAKER_01]: And part of the problem is associations try to use too many things. 18:13.782 --> 18:15.323 [SPEAKER_01]: They try to solve like 15 problems. 18:15.423 --> 18:24.165 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, that goes back to governance where in these strategy retreats, everyone wants to have their little pet project on the table and they don't want it to die. 18:24.245 --> 18:26.806 [SPEAKER_01]: But you have to go pick two or three things and do them well. 18:27.366 --> 18:29.227 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's some tough choices that have to be made. 18:29.567 --> 18:40.933 [SPEAKER_01]: My view is associations create a lot of friction and friction is an enemy, and number one enemy perhaps in some contexts to helping your audience gain value from you. 18:41.014 --> 18:46.997 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you make it hard for me to get value from you, even if I say hey you know Jeff, I know you guys have 18:47.357 --> 18:50.259 [SPEAKER_01]: unbelievable expertise and education and learning. 18:50.879 --> 18:56.642 [SPEAKER_01]: And, in fact, for us, that's super relevant because we run a certification program on AI, for associations like I've mentioned. 18:57.123 --> 18:57.983 [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to learn from you. 18:58.704 --> 19:01.685 [SPEAKER_01]: And you make it quite easy because your content is pretty easy to access. 19:01.765 --> 19:02.866 [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty well organized. 19:03.006 --> 19:03.987 [SPEAKER_01]: You have podcasts. 19:04.027 --> 19:06.108 [SPEAKER_01]: You have, you know, you have written format material. 19:06.128 --> 19:08.229 [SPEAKER_01]: So I can find you easily, I can find your content easily. 19:08.689 --> 19:13.332 [SPEAKER_01]: But even if you had great content, but if you made it really, really hard for me to get to it, 19:13.772 --> 19:21.996 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to come to you as a authority on the subject, even if I know you and respect you and think you're the greatest source of information on it, saving within association. 19:22.296 --> 19:24.457 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a certain tolerance people have for friction. 19:24.977 --> 19:26.198 [SPEAKER_01]: So think about it this way. 19:26.398 --> 19:28.459 [SPEAKER_01]: Why did Google completely freak out? 19:28.939 --> 19:37.103 [SPEAKER_01]: They lost it when Chatchee PT started rising because they realized that is a displacement of their business if they don't catch up and do something. 19:37.763 --> 19:40.825 [SPEAKER_01]: And they put some serious horsepower into it now, and I think they're doing some good stuff. 19:40.865 --> 19:44.989 [SPEAKER_01]: But when you see a moment to shift like that, you have to pay attention to it. 19:45.009 --> 19:49.552 [SPEAKER_01]: So associations have this issue that their stuff is hard to get access to. 19:49.632 --> 19:50.593 [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to find things. 19:50.653 --> 19:55.117 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, almost every association CEO I talk to says, yeah, the no more complaint I get from my board or from, 19:55.737 --> 20:11.539 [SPEAKER_01]: Closed in volunteers is that it's hard to navigate our website and they're like, oh, let's go spend a half a million dollars on a new website with some vendor and then six months after that website goes live like yeah, it's like glossier and shinier and smells better, but it's still basically sucks in terms of being able to access the content they need. 20:12.080 --> 20:16.623 [SPEAKER_01]: So, you're not going to solve it with like a new version of a horse and cart. 20:16.723 --> 20:22.967 [SPEAKER_01]: You need different approaches to solve the problem because the problem isn't that anyone has anything with the best of intentions. 20:23.087 --> 20:25.268 [SPEAKER_01]: It's that's a really complicated problem. 20:25.469 --> 20:26.569 [SPEAKER_01]: You have a lot of content. 20:26.589 --> 20:28.090 [SPEAKER_01]: You have a lot of different people to serve. 20:28.410 --> 20:29.951 [SPEAKER_01]: So, you need AI to personalize. 20:29.971 --> 20:31.272 [SPEAKER_01]: You need AI to curate. 20:31.312 --> 20:33.594 [SPEAKER_01]: You need AI to make things conversational. 20:34.094 --> 20:35.375 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the opportunity front of you. 20:35.695 --> 20:39.776 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, five years ago, it would have cost you a fortune to do any of this and it would have been pretty low quality. 20:40.156 --> 20:44.518 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's extraordinary quality and it's very accessible even to very small associations. 20:44.838 --> 20:46.839 [SPEAKER_01]: But you have to start by understanding what it can do. 20:46.899 --> 20:49.080 [SPEAKER_01]: You can't just start slapping things in your own, you can. 20:49.560 --> 20:51.641 [SPEAKER_01]: You can buy things and start slapping them in your website. 20:51.681 --> 20:54.322 [SPEAKER_01]: But it's much better if you spend some time learning first. 21:00.830 --> 21:05.058 [SPEAKER_00]: You've run a lot of programs to help people in associations with AI. 21:05.459 --> 21:10.509 [SPEAKER_00]: What have you learned from that around sort of, you know, what hangs people up around AI? 21:10.569 --> 21:12.913 [SPEAKER_00]: What are their hopes, their fears, their blind spots? 21:13.802 --> 21:29.092 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, you know, a sidecar we've got an audience of about 30,000 people that can seem our content on a regular basis, whether it's our three times a week newsletter, which is totally free, we also run a weekly podcast called The Sidecar Sync, a lot of listeners tune in their regular little learning updates. 21:29.472 --> 21:32.274 [SPEAKER_01]: We've got a free book called The Sand, which is an AI book. 21:32.774 --> 21:36.675 [SPEAKER_01]: full-length business book about AI, for associations totally free to download. 21:37.015 --> 21:37.896 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of other stuff. 21:37.916 --> 21:39.016 [SPEAKER_01]: So we put it out there. 21:39.036 --> 21:41.497 [SPEAKER_01]: We got about 30,000 people who regularly consume this stuff. 21:41.537 --> 21:42.777 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's growing quite rapidly. 21:42.897 --> 21:45.538 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's almost double in size from this time last year. 21:45.658 --> 21:47.499 [SPEAKER_01]: So clearly, there's a lot of demand there. 21:47.719 --> 21:54.901 [SPEAKER_01]: What I've learned from it on my end personally is I think that people are obviously hungry for this, but that it's unbelievable. 21:55.281 --> 21:57.282 [SPEAKER_01]: fast people become experts. 21:57.742 --> 22:03.465 [SPEAKER_01]: We have people that we've brought into our ecosystem that started off going, I don't know which way is up when it comes to AI. 22:03.986 --> 22:05.887 [SPEAKER_01]: And now these are people that are writing blogs. 22:05.987 --> 22:07.388 [SPEAKER_01]: They're leading sessions. 22:07.508 --> 22:08.688 [SPEAKER_01]: They're connecting with others. 22:08.808 --> 22:10.890 [SPEAKER_01]: It's part of what we do is help folks do that. 22:11.490 --> 22:12.530 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's amazing. 22:12.570 --> 22:15.152 [SPEAKER_01]: It's so incredibly rewarding to help people in their journey. 22:15.212 --> 22:16.933 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're doing things in their organization. 22:17.433 --> 22:19.054 [SPEAKER_01]: punching way above their way class, right? 22:19.114 --> 22:21.114 [SPEAKER_01]: And some of these are from very small associations. 22:21.474 --> 22:29.797 [SPEAKER_01]: There is a perception that we can't do it because of X, whether it's oh, we're not that technical, oh, oh, we don't have a big budget or oh, we're a very small association. 22:29.817 --> 22:32.458 [SPEAKER_01]: There's all these obstacles, but those are all psychological. 22:32.538 --> 22:35.219 [SPEAKER_01]: The reality is is that the tools are accessible, 22:35.959 --> 22:37.780 [SPEAKER_01]: fairly easy to use if you want to put the time in. 22:37.940 --> 22:43.403 [SPEAKER_01]: You don't need to be a technician to be fairly good with this stuff fairly quickly, which is the exciting part. 22:43.723 --> 22:53.427 [SPEAKER_01]: One thing I would say I would share with your listeners Jeff is that a big impediment is fear of the organization not wanting the staff to do stuff with AI. 22:53.467 --> 22:57.789 [SPEAKER_01]: There are still a lot of associations who have either outright bandit AI. 22:57.829 --> 23:03.532 [SPEAKER_01]: There's still people who've done that, which good luck with that one, because your people are using AI just FYI. 23:03.572 --> 23:05.293 [SPEAKER_01]: They're just doing it with personal accounts. 23:05.693 --> 23:11.356 [SPEAKER_01]: Most likely free personal accounts, which have zero security and your content is being fed to those free accounts. 23:11.376 --> 23:20.480 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you are banning AI, you're actually essentially saying, hey, would you like to use DeepSeek and send all of your associations content across the Pacific Ocean? 23:21.000 --> 23:21.860 [SPEAKER_01]: Cool, go for it. 23:22.260 --> 23:27.242 [SPEAKER_01]: So the reality is is that if you don't set policy, people will just do whatever they want to do. 23:27.602 --> 23:28.902 [SPEAKER_01]: And there are some people who will do nothing. 23:28.982 --> 23:29.823 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, don't get me wrong. 23:29.863 --> 23:35.724 [SPEAKER_01]: There are some people who are the rules followers who will say, well, my organization said, thou shalt not do AI, and so I won't. 23:36.124 --> 23:38.085 [SPEAKER_01]: But there's a large number of people who will. 23:38.765 --> 23:40.266 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's an stressful too. 23:40.326 --> 23:42.186 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a super anxiety-inducing. 23:42.246 --> 23:44.987 [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to use a tool that you know could potentially help you. 23:45.547 --> 23:50.670 [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's the people out there who don't want to change anything, but they don't necessarily like, drudgery either. 23:51.010 --> 23:52.631 [SPEAKER_01]: They might be afraid of losing their job. 23:52.671 --> 24:03.838 [SPEAKER_01]: There's all those kinds of issues where people are thinking, well, if you're so good with AI, then I don't need to do my manual job anymore, which is repetitive, might be white collar labor, but it's very repetitive, and there's a lot of jobs like that. 24:04.318 --> 24:12.485 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's your job as a leader to envision that future to find the roles where people's experience knowledge and unique contributions to your culture can add value. 24:12.625 --> 24:18.430 [SPEAKER_01]: Most associations aren't looking to cut tons of jobs or any jobs, but people assume that that's what they're going to do. 24:18.830 --> 24:19.931 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's another obstacle. 24:19.991 --> 24:22.092 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a big leadership gap here. 24:22.593 --> 24:26.116 [SPEAKER_01]: Both in terms of just basic, like figure out what your AI policy is going to be. 24:26.556 --> 24:33.464 [SPEAKER_01]: We've got templates for that, by the way, on our website that are free, you can go download on sidecar that will help you figure out like what your policy should be. 24:33.524 --> 24:41.614 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really basic stuff to you, by the way, it doesn't require a lawyer, it doesn't require tons of work, but it's like, hey, it's chatGPT aloud, is cloud aloud. 24:41.994 --> 24:43.396 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you going to allow meeting note takers? 24:43.416 --> 24:43.516 [SPEAKER_01]: So, 24:44.577 --> 25:03.398 [SPEAKER_01]: And this Zoom call you have a meeting note taker that's helping you record probably the notes for the pod and it's going to help you put together, you know, all that kind of stuff, which is great, but do you want to allow that in general when you have a Zoom call or a team's call, especially if the note takers when you never heard of, because a note taker can show up from any company that anyone happens to use and, you know, where's that content going. 25:03.878 --> 25:05.641 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's just all these things you need to think through. 25:05.781 --> 25:12.851 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, it's not a gargantuan task, but the absence of such policy is an impediment to adoption, and it's also a major stress point for your team. 25:12.891 --> 25:13.452 [SPEAKER_01]: So fix that. 25:13.532 --> 25:15.034 [SPEAKER_01]: You can do that in the next 30 days easily. 25:16.022 --> 25:22.588 [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought you're coming too about how quickly some people sort of learned and became experts just participating. 25:23.549 --> 25:24.890 [SPEAKER_00]: I find totally true. 25:25.171 --> 25:28.073 [SPEAKER_00]: You've mentioned later, you know, just making that 15 minutes a day. 25:28.454 --> 25:36.361 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure you're familiar with Ethan Mollick who says, just roll up your sleeves and do that that 10 hours, which I mean, once you do that, you start to realize this is doable. 25:36.461 --> 25:38.703 [SPEAKER_00]: And you can get so much out of it, then I was in a... 25:39.624 --> 26:02.877 [SPEAKER_00]: a mastermind group we run just the other day and somebody was lamenting the fact that their organization won't pay for the $20 for the chat GPT subscription each month and if you look at how much that actually adds up to in terms of cost annually it's trivial compared to most other things they're doing with software and the potential returns are huge but the organization hasn't made the kind of decisions that you're talking about and really put the 26:05.098 --> 26:19.674 [SPEAKER_00]: I did want to I'm also dive in in addition to side card to two of the applications that are parked of the blue cypress family and you're welcome to talk about others if you'd like these two jumped out at me partly because I was at ASA recently and I'd notice them there. 26:20.214 --> 26:26.801 [SPEAKER_00]: but also one of them we've actually referenced in our work recently and that's Betty which is the sort of chat box type application. 26:27.262 --> 26:34.890 [SPEAKER_00]: We're not now at a point where I believe it's sort of traditional formal structured courses are going to decline significantly. 26:35.190 --> 26:36.331 [SPEAKER_00]: There is certainly a role for them. 26:36.371 --> 26:36.992 [SPEAKER_00]: They will not go away, but 26:39.134 --> 26:56.407 [SPEAKER_00]: these unstructured learning activities where the learner is able to engage how they need to engage at that point in time to solve the problem, learn what they need to learn a chatbot is a great vehicle for that, and we actually recommended it as one of the solutions in an engagement recently. 26:57.067 --> 27:10.241 [SPEAKER_00]: We're also very big on data these days, like traditionally that the folks in our audience, the learning business audience have not done enough with data either to understand their market or to make learning that really adapts to their market. 27:10.722 --> 27:16.888 [SPEAKER_00]: So Betty is one of your applications, skip is another, which I know does sort of data analysis. 27:17.469 --> 27:21.672 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you talk a little bit about sort of what those two applications do? 27:21.752 --> 27:27.615 [SPEAKER_00]: And then again, if there are others, you feel like it's relevant to mention to our audience, feel free to do that. 27:28.156 --> 27:28.316 [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. 27:28.336 --> 27:30.037 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'll talk about three categories. 27:30.057 --> 27:34.720 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll mention our offerings in the space, obviously, which we know better than we know anything else. 27:34.800 --> 27:35.900 [SPEAKER_01]: I can speak to them the best. 27:36.361 --> 27:43.385 [SPEAKER_01]: But the three categories I think are critical for all associations or knowledge insights and personalization. 27:43.645 --> 27:46.067 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we have a knowledge agent in Betty. 27:46.787 --> 27:55.555 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a data analytics agent in skip and we have a personalization engine in a product called rasa.io, which I'll talk about each of those briefly. 27:56.096 --> 28:02.642 [SPEAKER_01]: So associations have been for hundreds of years in some cases been the center of knowledge for their community. 28:03.522 --> 28:19.006 [SPEAKER_01]: And a knowledge agent is essentially imagine a being, in this case, it's a computer, but it's an entity that has the deepest and best most contextualized knowledge in your field of anyone on the planet. 28:19.466 --> 28:21.227 [SPEAKER_01]: And is available all day, every day. 28:22.347 --> 28:29.914 [SPEAKER_01]: and can be available as an assistant, can be available as a tutor, can be available as a writing partner, and that's exactly what Betty is. 28:29.994 --> 28:32.957 [SPEAKER_01]: So Betty has been around since late 2022. 28:33.377 --> 28:43.666 [SPEAKER_01]: We've been working, as I mentioned with AI for a lot longer than that, but we knew this moment in time would be coming because we've been working with both predictive AI and generative AI for years prior to the 28:45.207 --> 28:56.853 [SPEAKER_01]: When check GPT launch, we said, okay, we need to pull the trigger on doing this knowledge agent knowledge assistant kind of concept now and so we did and Betty has over 100 enterprise associations using the product. 28:56.933 --> 28:58.254 [SPEAKER_01]: It's growing extremely fast. 28:58.654 --> 29:05.398 [SPEAKER_01]: But basically what happens is this and association says, we want to train Betty and so Betty will learn your content. 29:05.458 --> 29:10.841 [SPEAKER_01]: Your content could be all of your past journal articles, your website, might be all of your online courses. 29:10.881 --> 29:11.401 [SPEAKER_01]: It could be all of 29:13.662 --> 29:17.646 [SPEAKER_01]: and Betty learns that and Betty states up to date on all that material as it continues to change. 29:17.906 --> 29:22.930 [SPEAKER_01]: And then Betty provides grounded answers to your community. 29:23.111 --> 29:24.832 [SPEAKER_01]: And grounded is very important term. 29:24.932 --> 29:27.755 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you've probably heard the term hallucination in the world of AI. 29:27.775 --> 29:30.697 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's when the AI is just kind of essentially makes something up. 29:31.098 --> 29:32.439 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's both a bug. 29:32.839 --> 29:35.182 [SPEAKER_01]: and a feature in some respects, not in this context. 29:35.242 --> 29:38.045 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a feature to make something up when someone's looking for answers. 29:38.526 --> 29:43.932 [SPEAKER_01]: It can be a feature when you're doing brainstorming and being creative about like what kind of business ideas could I come up with? 29:43.992 --> 29:46.736 [SPEAKER_01]: How can I possibly do a better marketing campaign? 29:47.116 --> 29:49.859 [SPEAKER_01]: That's where the AI's creativity, let's say, is helpful. 29:50.380 --> 29:55.464 [SPEAKER_01]: Context the knowledge retrieval and answering particularly mission critical questions, it's completely unacceptable. 29:55.964 --> 30:01.448 [SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, there's many AI solutions out there that still allow for this concept of hallucinations to see through. 30:01.968 --> 30:11.114 [SPEAKER_01]: At Betty, our number one priority has been accuracy of the knowledge because associations, especially in medical or engineering units, they cannot tolerate inaccuracies. 30:11.354 --> 30:15.477 [SPEAKER_01]: So every answer that Betty provides, whether it's through chat or through 30:19.460 --> 30:24.762 [SPEAKER_01]: This is not just the chatbot, that's one way to surface beddy, but you can connect beddy to the rest of your critical business infrastructure. 30:25.262 --> 30:35.187 [SPEAKER_01]: Beddy always cites her sources and is always able to refer back to the knowledge retrieved and the thinking process that went into formulating the response. 30:35.607 --> 30:42.410 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not some black box where you're hoping and praying that it's going to answer your members' questions correctly, and it's grounded on your content. 30:42.930 --> 30:43.790 [SPEAKER_01]: only your content. 30:43.870 --> 30:46.812 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not using the internet, it's not using random websites. 30:47.312 --> 30:57.656 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a very powerful solution and it's purpose built for this sector where fault tolerance is critical in terms of availability, where the tolerance for any risk is very low of course for good reason. 30:58.096 --> 31:07.419 [SPEAKER_01]: So Betty's been an incredible hit we expect to see Betty grow for years to come because the problem she solves are ultimately different than the problems you can solve through classical means. 31:08.119 --> 31:11.320 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mentioned earlier the difficulty of accessing the information people want. 31:11.340 --> 31:12.921 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Betty completely solves that, right? 31:13.321 --> 31:20.243 [SPEAKER_01]: You go and rather than having to like put in the right keyword into some search tool, even if it's a great search tool, and you get 50 articles back, that's not 31:20.243 --> 31:21.284 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not necessarily helpful. 31:21.664 --> 31:24.045 [SPEAKER_01]: Instead, you go to Betty and say, I'm working on this problem. 31:24.725 --> 31:28.027 [SPEAKER_01]: Betty gives you an unbelievable answer, you're going to come back to that, right? 31:28.067 --> 31:30.368 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're a member who you don't have that experience, you're going to come back to that. 31:31.008 --> 31:33.650 [SPEAKER_01]: Some people say, well, how can these associations compete with CHATGPT? 31:33.670 --> 31:35.190 [SPEAKER_01]: And the answer is, is two things. 31:35.310 --> 31:38.912 [SPEAKER_01]: Number one, your private content, and number two, it's your brand. 31:39.372 --> 31:40.973 [SPEAKER_01]: People will trust your brand. 31:41.053 --> 31:48.637 [SPEAKER_01]: For good reason, if you are grounding your answers on the basis of your proprietary and uniquely high quality knowledge base. 31:55.242 --> 31:58.745 [SPEAKER_01]: You asked about data and insights, and so I'll kind of pivot to that next. 31:59.245 --> 32:08.233 [SPEAKER_01]: We also identified what we consider one of the grand challenges of association management is insights into really anything. 32:08.433 --> 32:19.302 [SPEAKER_01]: It can be classical database questions like how many members that I lose in the last month or what's my renewal rates or reports from events where it's like how many attendees do I have that were 32:19.682 --> 32:25.644 [SPEAKER_01]: and attend to it some prior year, but not this year, and all those kinds of things, that those are fairly straightforward to do traditionally. 32:26.164 --> 32:29.965 [SPEAKER_01]: Part of the problem is is that people have this explosion of systems. 32:30.065 --> 32:33.306 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just an AMS or an LMS or a CMS. 32:33.386 --> 32:39.968 [SPEAKER_01]: It's those things, but it's also probably 5 or 10 or 50 other systems that are used for different specialty things. 32:40.008 --> 32:41.388 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not going to go away. 32:41.408 --> 32:47.910 [SPEAKER_01]: People have been trying to fight this since the beginning of computing, and there have always been specialty systems because they do the job really well. 32:48.470 --> 33:06.770 [SPEAKER_01]: So the question is then how do you solve for a widely distributed source of truth in terms of data and then how do you make it so that people can ask any question just like with Betty ask any question and have a rapid response with a well thought out reason to answer and it's not just for technicians right it's actually specifically for business users. 33:07.270 --> 33:19.160 [SPEAKER_01]: So think of skip essentially as like cloud or chatGPT where you have a conversational interface and skip is living though in a secure data platform. 33:19.240 --> 33:27.287 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's an AI data platform that we have in the market called member junction, which is a totally free open source data platform we publish and we maintain. 33:27.707 --> 33:30.490 [SPEAKER_01]: And what it allows you to do is to easily ingest data, 33:30.770 --> 33:32.151 [SPEAKER_01]: from all your different data sources. 33:32.212 --> 33:39.619 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're using Salesforce and let's say you also have an AMS and you have a financial management system and you have 10 other SaaS products that are out there. 33:39.719 --> 33:44.103 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some spreadsheets and other things that throw to the mix to kind of round it out. 33:44.564 --> 33:48.447 [SPEAKER_01]: You can ingest all that data very easily into member junction and keep it up to date. 33:49.288 --> 33:55.230 [SPEAKER_01]: And then skip lives on top of that and it has secure access to all that data and it's smart enough to figure it out. 33:55.470 --> 34:04.014 [SPEAKER_01]: So the problem for us humans is that that many systems is too complex for us to know like oh well this data lives over here and this data lives over here and how do I connect it and make sense of it. 34:04.674 --> 34:25.864 [SPEAKER_01]: Skip's an incredibly powerful AI and has the ability to look across any de-complexity of schemas, and then write queries, write code, and ultimately come back to what we call components, which are reports and dashboards, that if you like them, you can save them and just rerun them however often you want, or you can ask for a new one's each time you use it. 34:26.324 --> 34:32.907 [SPEAKER_01]: Skip typically takes anywhere from two to five minutes to produce an answer, sometimes a little faster, sometimes slower, depends on how much code skip has to write, 34:33.007 --> 34:38.051 [SPEAKER_01]: You can think of skip essentially as a software development team coupled with like an MBA level person. 34:38.111 --> 34:52.083 [SPEAKER_01]: So you take a brilliant business strategist and analyst, coupled with a data scientist and a great programmer, combine them all together in a team, and make them available again 24 seven and able to respond to you within a handful of minutes. 34:52.824 --> 34:53.885 [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty amazing. 34:53.905 --> 34:55.066 [SPEAKER_01]: You can start to get insights. 34:55.526 --> 34:58.769 [SPEAKER_01]: What I love about skip is that we're trying to reignite curiosity. 34:58.889 --> 35:00.490 [SPEAKER_01]: We have all been conditioned. 35:01.271 --> 35:03.894 [SPEAKER_01]: to not expect much in terms of data. 35:03.994 --> 35:08.660 [SPEAKER_01]: Because it's hard, we have to go to a vendor or we have to go to IT and we've got to wait. 35:09.141 --> 35:17.310 [SPEAKER_01]: And by the time we get an answer because some custom query or report has to be created, even if you have the dollars to spend it, typically you wait two weeks, four weeks, eight weeks. 35:17.951 --> 35:27.217 [SPEAKER_01]: You kind of don't ask the question because you're like, well, I need to know now, and if I don't know the answer now, I'm not going to wait in my own workflow for two weeks to get the answer. 35:27.617 --> 35:35.762 [SPEAKER_01]: So as a result of that, many of the curiosities people have about their data to gain insights and the leverage insights are kind of stamped out over time. 35:36.243 --> 35:37.844 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's really what we're excited about with Skip. 35:39.396 --> 35:49.803 [SPEAKER_01]: And then finally, I'll say, I think one of the most important things to get right is the idea of getting the right piece of information to the right member through the right channel at the right time. 35:49.963 --> 35:51.644 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's this idea of personalization. 35:51.684 --> 35:56.988 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is actually the original problem we've been working on solving in the AI realm going back to the early 2010s. 35:58.049 --> 36:03.612 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is before Rosso was a former unofficial company, but back at afterfied AMS business 36:04.653 --> 36:17.008 [SPEAKER_01]: We were sitting on top of these massive large scale databases of information in our belief was, oh, well, you know, we could make these websites better and make online communities better and make the education process better if we could personalize. 36:17.729 --> 36:19.972 [SPEAKER_01]: So let's use all the information and they MS to do that. 36:20.032 --> 36:21.114 [SPEAKER_01]: That was the original idea in 2013-14-15. 36:23.456 --> 36:35.903 [SPEAKER_01]: And by 2016, when I sold the company, we had spun out the assets that became Rasa, the technology assets that became Rasa, and ended up focusing in one particular narrow category at first, which was email newsletters. 36:36.203 --> 36:38.725 [SPEAKER_01]: So this is almost like an afterthought, but people 36:39.365 --> 36:43.609 [SPEAKER_01]: actually forget about the fact that the news letter is one of the most valuable things many associations provide. 36:44.169 --> 36:53.978 [SPEAKER_01]: So the lowly news letter which goes out maybe to 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 people a week or even daily is actually your most frequent point of interaction oftentimes, right? 36:54.038 --> 36:55.500 [SPEAKER_01]: How often do people come to your website? 36:55.860 --> 36:57.261 [SPEAKER_01]: Even a wonderful website. 36:57.501 --> 37:00.924 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe once a week, probably once a month would be extremely high. 37:01.405 --> 37:05.809 [SPEAKER_01]: Most of the time people come to your website when they want to register for your annual conference or renew their membership. 37:06.249 --> 37:06.990 [SPEAKER_01]: or something like that. 37:07.090 --> 37:07.691 [SPEAKER_01]: It's their cover. 37:07.711 --> 37:11.596 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they do a look up to try to find an article and go after their frustrated, right? 37:11.616 --> 37:13.980 [SPEAKER_01]: That's happening three, four, five, six times a year. 37:14.220 --> 37:16.743 [SPEAKER_01]: But your newsletter hits their inbox every day, perhaps. 37:17.304 --> 37:20.989 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's an opportunity to deliver value or an opportunity to frustrate. 37:21.470 --> 37:22.531 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the problem is, 37:23.432 --> 37:34.256 [SPEAKER_01]: If I have 30,000 people at Sidecar, for example, and yes, they're all association people, maybe mostly association people, and mostly they're interested in AI, because they wouldn't be part of Sidecar if they're not, right? 37:34.956 --> 37:37.497 [SPEAKER_01]: But how do I then make it really relevant to them? 37:37.617 --> 37:38.558 [SPEAKER_01]: How technical are they? 37:38.638 --> 37:40.419 [SPEAKER_01]: How far along in the journey are they? 37:40.819 --> 37:42.860 [SPEAKER_01]: What's their level of proficiency in different tools? 37:42.920 --> 37:43.780 [SPEAKER_01]: What's their area of interest? 37:43.840 --> 37:46.581 [SPEAKER_01]: Are they a finance person or a marketing person or CEO? 37:46.921 --> 37:47.521 [SPEAKER_01]: Are they entry-level? 37:47.541 --> 37:51.503 [SPEAKER_01]: There's all these dimensions of what makes you and I individuals. 37:52.103 --> 37:54.444 [SPEAKER_01]: And so this goes way beyond the idea of segmentation. 37:54.484 --> 37:57.266 [SPEAKER_01]: This is infinite segments, essentially, it's dynamic. 37:57.726 --> 38:00.827 [SPEAKER_01]: The idea was to say, can we really target the individual? 38:00.847 --> 38:07.891 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what we've proven with Rosa for a decade now that if you send emails that are deeply personalized, 38:08.631 --> 38:11.194 [SPEAKER_01]: The funny thing that happens is people ask for more of them. 38:11.715 --> 38:16.880 [SPEAKER_01]: Associations often say, oh, we can only do a weekly newsletter because we send a student emails. 38:17.341 --> 38:19.163 [SPEAKER_01]: What's true if your emails annoy people? 38:19.483 --> 38:24.869 [SPEAKER_01]: If people are getting something that isn't value-additive to them, they say no more. 38:25.330 --> 38:29.134 [SPEAKER_01]: But if you give people something that's improving their life, they're going to want more of it. 38:29.955 --> 38:31.256 [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I want more free ice cream. 38:31.276 --> 38:32.937 [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I want more free whatever. 38:32.997 --> 38:33.417 [SPEAKER_01]: It's great. 38:33.558 --> 38:34.098 [SPEAKER_01]: It's wonderful. 38:34.158 --> 38:34.778 [SPEAKER_01]: It's utility. 38:35.279 --> 38:37.560 [SPEAKER_01]: So if it's negative utility, they say no more. 38:37.600 --> 38:39.722 [SPEAKER_01]: If it's positive, it's very simple, right? 38:40.422 --> 38:48.108 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, sure enough, with Rosso-based email newsletters, and this is over 10 years with hundreds and hundreds of association customers and non associations as well. 38:48.648 --> 38:49.888 [SPEAKER_01]: We've shown a couple of things. 38:49.948 --> 38:59.732 [SPEAKER_01]: Number one is your unsubscribe rate is cut down by an order of magnitude, literally like a 10x decrease in unsubscribe rate because we're sending relevant content every single touch. 39:00.252 --> 39:06.434 [SPEAKER_01]: Number two, your open rates go up by about 2x and number three, your click rates go up between 5 and 10x. 39:07.374 --> 39:09.615 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's an enormous improvement in engagement. 39:10.335 --> 39:17.645 [SPEAKER_01]: many people have quoted that they value the newsletter as the number one benefit of membership after they implement a personalized newsletter. 39:17.685 --> 39:19.768 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a tremendous, easy thing to do. 39:19.828 --> 39:23.313 [SPEAKER_01]: That's why I like to talk about it because it's proven hundreds of associations use it. 39:23.713 --> 39:27.378 [SPEAKER_01]: Many of them make a lot of money because of it because if you sell ads in your newsletter, 39:27.899 --> 39:35.002 [SPEAKER_01]: And all of a sudden you have five times as many clicks and two or three times as many opens and a bigger audience because there's fewer unsubscribes. 39:35.382 --> 39:38.063 [SPEAKER_01]: It's really good for your advertising metrics and you're going to make more money. 39:38.463 --> 39:39.904 [SPEAKER_01]: But ultimately, you serve the member better. 39:40.104 --> 39:45.106 [SPEAKER_01]: So, more stressantly, I'll say the last thing about Rasa is we broaden the technology. 39:45.126 --> 39:54.989 [SPEAKER_01]: So, the number one complaint, if you will, that Rasa customers have had, and we have like a 98% retention rate year over year for a decade now, the number one complaint people have had is, well, I wish you could send more emails. 39:56.770 --> 40:03.258 [SPEAKER_01]: and that's the thing we've been working on for a couple of years is that the AI has gotten powerful enough where it can personalize anything. 40:03.278 --> 40:12.488 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not just newsletters anymore, but now you can send any email through Rossits, a product called Rossica campaigns, there's two two different things Rossi and newsletters in Rossica campaigns. 40:12.989 --> 40:15.152 [SPEAKER_01]: Rossica campaigns is a director placement for 40:15.752 --> 40:38.989 [SPEAKER_01]: old school email blast software that doesn't personalize or doesn't personalize well it's cost comparable to those kinds of packages and it allows you to do any kind of campaign sequence-based campaigns but the key to it is personalization, deep personalization so a couple quick examples in your world of learning rather than promoting a course and saying hey Jeff you should attend my upcoming course I can specifically tell you why 40:39.449 --> 40:42.750 [SPEAKER_01]: I can give you a subject line that's handwritten for you by AI. 40:43.150 --> 40:53.814 [SPEAKER_01]: I can give you three bullets about lessons in the course that I think are going to be super super relevant to you, same thing for annual meetings, same things for volunteer opportunities and on and on and on. 40:53.894 --> 40:55.535 [SPEAKER_01]: So I actually get excited. 40:55.755 --> 40:56.615 [SPEAKER_01]: I love all these products. 40:56.655 --> 41:00.076 [SPEAKER_01]: They're all my children essentially, so it's hard to say, which is a favorite. 41:00.096 --> 41:06.839 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have a favorite, but I think the idea of personalization doesn't quite have as much sizzle, but the value creation is absolutely enormous. 41:14.445 --> 41:19.607 [SPEAKER_00]: Many people are worried that as AI becomes more powerful, that human role starts to shrink. 41:19.827 --> 41:21.188 [SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to have issues with that. 41:22.308 --> 41:26.510 [SPEAKER_00]: But of course, associations and learning business are supposed to be fostering human growth. 41:26.550 --> 41:27.430 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what they're about. 41:27.490 --> 41:34.773 [SPEAKER_00]: So where do you see the uniquely human opportunities that AI is never going to replace? 41:34.873 --> 41:41.375 [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, certainly I've got learning in my mind, but just more broadly, how should organizations lean 41:43.996 --> 41:45.056 [SPEAKER_00]: is still there with AI. 41:45.877 --> 41:48.977 [SPEAKER_01]: I think you leave the thought process where will the customer naturally go? 41:49.158 --> 41:52.218 [SPEAKER_01]: So do customers still go to Blockbuster or do they stream on Netflix? 41:52.398 --> 41:52.919 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the latter. 41:53.279 --> 41:55.459 [SPEAKER_01]: Because it's more convenient and the value is better. 41:55.479 --> 41:56.220 [SPEAKER_01]: There's more choice. 41:56.280 --> 41:57.900 [SPEAKER_01]: It's faster, easier, cheaper, better. 41:58.440 --> 42:00.421 [SPEAKER_01]: So no matter how great your video rental story is, 42:01.041 --> 42:01.501 [SPEAKER_01]: doesn't matter. 42:01.982 --> 42:04.983 [SPEAKER_01]: The flip side of that is what would people continue to do with people? 42:05.263 --> 42:14.749 [SPEAKER_01]: I think connecting in person, I think synchronous learning to couple asynchronous even if you can automate almost all of asynchronous with AI tutors and AI generated content. 42:15.209 --> 42:18.371 [SPEAKER_01]: Synchronous experiences with experts, I think are deeply valuable. 42:18.531 --> 42:24.495 [SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned the mastermind that you guys around, we do want to swell that kind of cohort based learning is incredibly powerful. 42:24.995 --> 42:26.276 [SPEAKER_01]: deeply human connections. 42:26.356 --> 42:27.876 [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's more opportunity to do that. 42:28.297 --> 42:35.100 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we at Sidecar, for example, with our audience of association AI professionals and people who are going through the certification process. 42:35.120 --> 42:36.820 [SPEAKER_01]: We get a lot of customer service inquiries, right? 42:36.880 --> 42:40.502 [SPEAKER_01]: Very similar to members service, same idea, and we're working on automating all of that. 42:40.922 --> 42:41.622 [SPEAKER_01]: And we love our team. 42:41.642 --> 42:43.023 [SPEAKER_01]: We're not planning on letting anyone go. 42:43.063 --> 42:44.544 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, we're going to add more team members. 42:44.604 --> 42:52.829 [SPEAKER_01]: But what these people are going to be doing instead of answering road emails as we get more of this agentic AI up and running is to make proactive outreach part of what they do. 42:52.869 --> 42:57.391 [SPEAKER_01]: They're going to call customers and say, how can I help you improve engagement amongst your team? 42:57.751 --> 43:03.474 [SPEAKER_01]: How can I help you get everyone in your association staff and your close-in volunteers up to speed on AI? 43:03.514 --> 43:05.996 [SPEAKER_01]: How can we increase that level of service? 43:06.576 --> 43:24.768 [SPEAKER_01]: In the world of education, I think, again, this is your domain far more than mine, but we've known for a long, long time for thousands of years that one to one tutoring has been the gold standard for the ultimate way of achieving outcomes in terms of learning and knowledge transfer and skill, and all that, yet that's not scalable, right? 43:24.828 --> 43:31.673 [SPEAKER_01]: Not all of us have an expert we can go sit with and hang out with all day and learn from and have discussions with. 43:32.213 --> 43:32.874 [SPEAKER_01]: But now we can. 43:33.254 --> 43:33.814 [SPEAKER_01]: Now we can. 43:34.154 --> 43:36.756 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's actually one of my favorite use cases of Betty. 43:36.796 --> 43:39.037 [SPEAKER_01]: I briefly mentioned is Betty as a tutor. 43:39.117 --> 43:47.381 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, if you come to the side card learning club, which is all our asynchronous content, we've got actually the 10 hours 11 hours of content you mentioned on an AI stuff. 43:47.801 --> 43:49.442 [SPEAKER_01]: And then in there, Betty is hanging out. 43:49.602 --> 43:54.485 [SPEAKER_01]: And so if you have a question, you can talk to Betty and Betty knows not a ton about you, but a little bit about you. 43:54.665 --> 43:55.866 [SPEAKER_01]: Soon we'll know everything about you. 43:56.246 --> 43:58.287 [SPEAKER_01]: And Betty does know where you are in the course. 43:58.567 --> 44:01.610 [SPEAKER_01]: and what you've studied so far, and the course, and the lesson that you're on. 44:02.130 --> 44:11.057 [SPEAKER_01]: And so when you talk to Betty, Betty is also primed to not give you the answer, but to take a more secretic approach to say, well Jeff, let me walk you through it like, what do you know about it? 44:11.117 --> 44:12.218 [SPEAKER_01]: How can I help you learn this? 44:12.298 --> 44:18.323 [SPEAKER_01]: And try to ultimately get you to the right outcome, but to be much more of a tutor mindset. 44:18.803 --> 44:21.986 [SPEAKER_01]: AI's don't get tired, and AI's can scale to every human honorist. 44:22.026 --> 44:25.649 [SPEAKER_01]: So we can all have the most incredible tutor in any field that we want. 44:26.089 --> 44:26.910 [SPEAKER_01]: We can't do that with people. 44:27.410 --> 44:31.773 [SPEAKER_01]: It takes us 25 plus years to grow a human into a productive member of the workforce. 44:32.153 --> 44:36.176 [SPEAKER_01]: We knew that with AI and no time flat, we can scale it basically to any number. 44:36.656 --> 44:40.118 [SPEAKER_01]: And the other thing to remember is that AI we have right now is the worst AI we're going to have. 44:40.518 --> 44:41.259 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just getting better. 44:41.299 --> 44:45.302 [SPEAKER_01]: It's on a six-month doubling curve roughly in terms of power relative to cost. 44:46.162 --> 44:48.484 [SPEAKER_01]: So coming back to your question, I'm optimistic. 44:48.824 --> 45:01.654 [SPEAKER_01]: I think if you are one of the people who's like, I'm going to learn this stuff, I'm going to figure out how to automate a lot of the drudgery, I'm going to focus on the connection, I'm going to focus on the relationships, I'm going to focus on new ideas, like we're explorers, right? 45:01.694 --> 45:12.443 [SPEAKER_01]: Like built deeply into our DNA is this desire to like fan out and figure out what's around the corner and what's on the next planet or what's behind the next business model and we have that opportunity now. 45:12.643 --> 45:17.085 [SPEAKER_01]: We can go and explore an unprecedented rate, and that means we're going to lead to more discovery. 45:17.685 --> 45:23.587 [SPEAKER_01]: The fixed mindset that the Earth is flat, there's nothing past what we, the known universe, is very limited. 45:23.667 --> 45:34.851 [SPEAKER_01]: And every time there's been any era of scientific progress or philosophical discovery, we quite regularly find out that in fact the last generation's thinking, as novel as it was at the time was limited. 45:35.211 --> 45:39.514 [SPEAKER_01]: which is by definition, what makes the world and the universe a giant and amazing mystery. 45:39.534 --> 45:41.095 [SPEAKER_01]: So to me, I'm excited. 45:41.476 --> 45:42.877 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, not everyone's going to share that. 45:42.917 --> 45:46.019 [SPEAKER_01]: People will lead with fear and a lot of times they're saying, I don't know if I can learn this. 45:47.020 --> 45:48.601 [SPEAKER_01]: I believe that we can bring everyone along. 45:54.324 --> 45:55.305 [SPEAKER_02]: We're not done just yet. 45:55.365 --> 45:56.886 [SPEAKER_02]: Stick around for our recap. 45:57.406 --> 46:02.910 [SPEAKER_00]: You'll find show notes and a transcript for this episode at leadinglearning.com slash episode 461. 46:04.331 --> 46:10.295 [SPEAKER_00]: Along with ways to learn more about the work that Ameth Nagarajan does and a link to his LinkedIn profile. 46:10.695 --> 46:11.576 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd love to connect. 46:12.016 --> 46:16.039 [SPEAKER_00]: He's also open to fielding emails at amethatbluecipress.io. 46:17.360 --> 46:31.932 [SPEAKER_02]: If you're serious about AI and you should be sure to check out the sidecar link at the end of the show notes at leadinglearning.com slash episode four six one because sidecar has dozens of free AI resources tailored to associations. 46:32.513 --> 46:39.558 [SPEAKER_00]: If you found this episode valuable, we'd be grateful if you'd share it with a colleague that helps more people find the show and supports the work we do. 46:40.499 --> 46:52.025 [SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, a myth underscored that leaders can't delegate understanding AI, investing even 15 minutes a day and learning about AI and using it makes a huge difference. 46:52.465 --> 46:56.587 [SPEAKER_02]: And learning businesses that put in the time will be positioned to thrive. 46:57.307 --> 47:00.710 [SPEAKER_00]: Ameeth also pointed out the opportunity cost of inaction. 47:01.190 --> 47:14.981 [SPEAKER_00]: Ameeth's focus is on associations and he noted that associations have incredible assets, brand, content, community, but they risk irrelevance if they don't apply AI to reduce friction and deliver value in new ways. 47:15.401 --> 47:20.645 [SPEAKER_00]: So, dear listener, make the time to learn and apply a bit of AI today. 47:21.166 --> 47:22.186 [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again for listening. 47:22.567 --> 47:25.209 [SPEAKER_02]: See you next time on the Leading Learning Podcast.